Tape Deck Mountain
Ghost - LEFSE
FILTER Grade: 82%

There’s definitely something in the water down in San Diego—and it’s not just the runoff from the Tijuana River. Of late, the sounds of dire apathy and unrelenting distortion infiltrating America’s finest via the pedals and amps of Wavves, Crocodiles, The Soft Pack, Christmas Island and now, Tape Deck Mountain, have been so murky and despondent you’d think they were all trapped in the Pacific Northwest. Even though many of their comrades in clamor have chosen loyalty to S.D.’s tried-and-true continuity in punk, Tape Deck Mountain veers more waywardly toward the lo-fi peaks and valleys, offering a keen, loyal nod to the rosters of K and early Sub Pop.  Resonating and radical, Ghost’s evocative and contradictory shades of noisy (“Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”) and dreamy (“Bat Lies”) soundscapes are a welcome and overdue escape from the “oppressiveness” of the Southern California sun.